


someone else will keep you safe from the storm

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Series: adrien augreste 2020 [13]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien AUGreste 2020, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Platonic Cuddling, Podfic Welcome, Sentimonster (Miraculous Ladybug), im counting sentibug as character death yes, uncertain grief/mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25891582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: Marinette's not even sure how they're supposed to grieve.  If they're supposed to grieve.Do you grieve for someone whose existence was counted in minutes?And even if other people don't, dothey?(Because someone should.  Someone has to.  Minutes or days or years, she'd had a life, and thatmatters).
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: adrien augreste 2020 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860751
Comments: 42
Kudos: 253





	someone else will keep you safe from the storm

**Author's Note:**

> adrien augreste 2020, for the sentimonster prompt! (guys, i really really hate the sentimonster adrien theory, it _freaks me out_ REALLY badly, so thats, uh, not the direction i was ever gonna take). 
> 
> so instead this fic directly follows the episode ladybug.

"You know, you didn't have to do this? We woulda seen each other for patrol in like, five hours." 

Chat's voice is too peaceful for Marinette to mistake his words for a complaint, even if she didn't know him far too well to think that he'd ever be complaining about spending time together in the first place.

And Marinette hadn't wanted to wait any longer to see him again herself. _Especially_ since he'd already been acting strange again, even before today- it's not obvious, or she doesn't think it's obvious, but he's started staring at the sky too much. 

Again.

"You did get thrown off a building earlier, Chat." Marinette blinks up at the sky herself. It's strange to be with Chat and yet be watching clouds soar across a clear blue sky. They don't tend to patrol in the daytime, and they definitely don't have time to cloud watch during a fight. They don't technically have time _now_ but for once she can't make herself care. 

She feels him shrug. "So? That happens like twice a week." 

"Yeah, it _really shouldn't,_ though. Stop getting thrown off buildings, would you?" Even now, her stomach clenches in remembered terror. Chat could have been-

He would have been fine. Eventually. Once she'd healed him. 

But he hadn't been fine even before he'd fallen, and one day he won't be fine at all if she _can't_ heal him, and she doesn't know if her Cure would have counted it as the kind of damage she _could_ cure, not when it had been Hawkmoth himself doing the throwing.

She's not even sure Chat's realised there was a chance she wouldn't have been able to heal him.

She's not sure he'd been thinking things through much at all, once Mayura had-

Marinette's not even sure how they're supposed to grieve. _If_ they're supposed to grieve. 

Do you grieve for someone whose existence was counted in minutes? 

And even if other people don't, do _they?  
_

(Because someone should. Someone _has_ to. Years or days or minutes, a life is still a life, and that _matters)._

"Sometimes I _fall_ off of buildings?" Chat muses. There's the tiniest thread of something in his voice, though, something Marinette doesn't think she'd hear except that this is _Chat._ Something she doesn't think she'd recognise if she didn't have the same unhappy guilt trying to weigh her down beside him. 

She thinks it's hitting him even worse than her, but then, as much as they protect each other she can't deny that he's always been much worse about it. She knows to curb any self-sacrificial tendencies if they happen to crop up; Chat Noir does _not._

And he hadn't been able to protect her.

"Kitty, I will ground you." But Marinette groans as she says it, stretching luxuriously and relaxing back against his side. It's not often they do take a break somewhere like this, somewhere soft and warm and wooded; for all of Paris' parks and gardens, the two of them spend more time running on the rooftops and swinging through the streets. The feel of the hot pavement under her feet and the scents that swirl up to the roofs from the food vendors below sings in her in a way the woods never have. 

Or at least, that they don't just yet. This _is_ still a part of Paris, and she's protected her city for too long to deny that Paris is very much a part of _her._ Of them both.

Chat Noir snorts. He doesn't move from where he's sprawled limply beside her with only the tip of his tail twitching lazily, but then he's already close enough for her to feel him purring. It's quiet enough that she'd bet he doesn't know he's doing it. "You're not my _real_ mom, LB." 

Marinette tries hard not to hear the way his voice goes unsteady on the words. It's not something she would ask about even if they could risk it, anyway. 

"Good thing, since I meant literally ground you. I will make you _stay_ on the _ground."_ Even with their shared current of unease, she's honestly sort of surprised he's still awake. The warm sun and cool breeze are making _her_ drowsy, and he's always been more affected. He still treats staying outside regardless of weather like it's a novelty.

She hadn't noticed that initially, but once she _had_ it had been hard to stop.

They're nearly always outside. She's known him longer than she likes to think about and he's not any less entranced by the sun warming them both, the wind stirring their hair, the now-distant sounds of the thriving city.

He still seems surprised, sometimes.

Chat Noir goes quiet, then, the steady rise and fall of his breath a reassuring metronome beside her. Marinette has other things she should be doing, and he must too, but for the rest of the day they're just- not going to go back to the part of their lives that's _less bright,_ somehow, than when they're with each other. 

The battle had been broadcast, but mostly to confusion. There are theories and questions and pleas to her and Chat for answers peppering the Ladyblog and Marinette just... can't, right now. No one is anywhere close to right, but she also doesn't know that she wants to explain, but she also doesn't know that she _doesn't._ Right now, the only people with any idea that Mayura's false Ladybug had been so hopeful and sentient and so brilliantly _real_ are herself and Chat and their enemies, and Marinette doesn't believe for a moment that their enemies had ever thought of their too-brief ally as anything but a tool.

Marinette knows that the weight in her chest is grief, but she doesn't know how to _handle_ it. The only person who's likely to understand is the one beside her, and he's just as hurt and confused as she is.

A fact he proves when he says, quietly, minutes or hours later, "I really thought we'd saved her."

She could tease him. She could try and blow things over, so that they aren't both up all night- all week- all month, or longer- staring up at this same shared sky and quietly hurting and desperately wondering and trying their hardest not to feel alone. 

The downside of feeling like Chat Noir belongs at her side, and she at his, is that now she always feels like she's lost her balance whenever he's not around. Like she's lost hold of her _self._ Like gravity's loosened its hold on her, just a little, because it can't find her anchor because her anchor's not in _her_ anymore.

She doesn't want to be alone right now, and she couldn't explain out loud even if she wanted to, but she knows that she could share a room with everyone Hawkmoth's ever akumatised and without Chat Noir there beside her she would still feel alone. 

But she doesn't want to tell him that, because she's not sure that Chat knows that it's not a healthy feeling. She's not sure Chat knows what codependency _is,_ and she's not sure he'd care if he did.

But he _would_ be hurt in a way she won't be able to heal if she tries to explain, so she doesn't. 

Marinette breathes, silently and in time with Chat Noir, blinking away the pressure at the back of her eyes. She wants to cry, because she thinks she might feel better if she does, but she can't. Instead that horrible pressure builds and builds and then stubbornly refuses to spill over, denying her the release of tears.

Her hand finds her partner's.

Marinette probably will end up making an announcement on the Ladyblog; it's the sort of thing she keeps her verified account for, after all. She can't do it just yet, but she should, later. Maybe a lot later. 

But their second Ladybug deserves more than to fade and be forgotten. She deserves for Paris to know that Mayura had _murdered_ her.

Because for what little time she'd had, she'd been _real,_ real and alive in a way that Mayura's sentimonsters usually aren't. 

Something had clearly been different this time, though. Marinette sincerely doesn't think this Ladybug had been anything like any other sentimonster they've seen. The implications of that are huge and horrifying and something that they're going to have to talk about it, but for now-

Chat Noir's hand wraps around hers in turn, her fingers brushing his ring in a way she should probably scold him for. She doesn't, because she thinks he's trying to tell her something by it, but she probably should. She should probably at least let go. He could have _lost_ Plagg earlier, and that could have lost them all, and even if it didn't losing Plagg would utterly destroy Chat Noir- and, honestly, it would devastate Marinette, too. Their kwami are a whole lot more to both of them than either of them can put into words, and Chat had come so _close_ to losing Plagg. 

But he hadn't, and they _had_ lost another Ladybug, and if Chat's hand grasps hers more tightly than usual Marinette's not going to say a word. 

They've seen each other die before, different times in different ways. They've seen it but they've come back from it. 

Mayura's Ladybug- _their_ new Ladybug, once they'd given her amok to her- is different. 

She's gone, and she won't come back. 

They'd tried.

Marinette squeezes Chat Noir's hand tighter, too, and knows that she isn't going to let go anytime soon.

**Author's Note:**

> title from espen lind & sissels where the lost ones go (i think?? i see it as sarah brightman a lot but... thats not the version i know, THIS is, so). 
> 
> me two days ago: (we lost an old patient, she was an old dog and it wasnt unexpected but she was also an old friend) cy im not feeling this death yet, that usually means its gonna hit me all at once in a couple days 
> 
> me while editing this: ...okay, so MAYBE it was hitting me earlier than i thought-
> 
> this one was SUPPOSED to be more adriencentric than it actually is? but this deeply affects them BOTH, and theyre not gonna be out of each others sight for a while yet, so.


End file.
